Project PowerHack Build

The build process took quite a long time. I had a very busy schedule and this build required more time for the cutting of the back and for the front panel wiring so the process spanned over several days. The most difficult part was probably the front panel wiring because I didn’t buy a prefabricated cable due to the budget so I had to manually wire the cable. That being said, I many of the pins had to be bent to fit into the cable so I had to be very careful to make sure that none of them would touch each other and that they would be at no risk of doing so.

Everything is running quite well now! Currently I only have Windows 10 Home installed and will add Mac OS X to the second hard drive later this week. Most games I have played so far (GTA V and IV, LEGO Worlds, Homeworld Remastered Collection) have run perfectly at 60 FPS. I’m going to wait on installing Ubuntu as for I may be adding more hard drives and I would like to use all of the 500 GB drive for Windows.

Despite all these achievements, there are a few issues. The most minor of these is the front USB port. I have not been able to use any USB 3.0 drive with it and I have had issues where the port will stop functioning in the middle of large file transfers. I plan on adding a USB 3.0 hub to the top of the case so this is only a small annoyance for me.

The most major issue at the moment is the DVD drive. I reused the original DVD drive that came with the G5 and I am starting to think that was a mistake. I have been unable to get the drive to function properly in Windows. I can put a disc in and Windows does detect it and shows the name of the disc, but I can’t do anything with the drive. The drive however works fine if I boot from it in the BIOS. If anyone knows how to resolve this please let me know!

My next plan for this machine is to make some upgrades. I have some USB PCI headers ordered so I can add 8 USB 2.0 ports to the back of the machine. After that, I plan on adding two 160 GB hard drives I have and buying an IDE controller for them. I will detail more about those plans later.